Jack Dellal, who prospered in the casino atmosphere of London's property
market in the 1960s and 1970s, has died at the age of 89.

He quietly enjoyed the sobriquet, although whether it was the product of long hours at the gaming table or derived from dealing in black textiles in Manchester is not clear.

But the nickname “Black Jack” Dellal epitomised the life of a property magnate who established a reputation as one of the shrewdest, most controversial and successful of a generation of wheeler-dealers flourishing in London’s casino atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s.

There was nothing flash or flamboyant about the diminutive son of an exiled Iraqi family, who was born in Manchester in 1923 and died at the weekend. He has left that to nine children – seven of them daughters – in a family that has embraced careers in fashion, films, property and gossip, and had Sir Mick Jagger as a godfather.

Mr Dellal played the property game like the cards he handled in Mayfair clubland, with a mixture of bluff, coolness and more than a little cunning. He had the ability to emerge with his fortune intact and reputation enhanced from gyrations in volatile markets but had some near scrapes.

The first was the secondary banking crisis of 1973-74, where some argue he was the “prime culprit” behind the crisis that engulfed City bankers Keyser Ullman and resulted in Sir Edward du Cann, chairman and Tory grandee being declared bankrupt.

Keyser was saved by the “lifeboat” launched by the Bank of England to avoid the secondary banking debacle turning into a financial rout. Over-borrowed property developers were caught out by the explosion in oil prices, inflation and the crash in values. The secondary banks that opened their purses for them, London and County and Sterling Industrial Securities, for example, were among the casualties.

Black Jack came up smiling. He had sold his bank, Dalton Barton, to Keyser Ullman for £58m just before the crash and escaped from the crisis almost unscathed. His position as Keyser deputy chairman meant he had an inside track on the turmoil while his other businesses continued to borrow from the bank.

The second scrape involved the sale of Bush House, until recently home of the BBC World Service in London, to Kato Kagaku, a Japanese group. Mr Dellal bought the property in 1987 for £55m and sold it two years later for £130m. Complaints to the Department of Trade and Industry about the deal led to an official investigation, but at the end of the day Black Jack was given a clean bill of health.

Mr Dellal prospered in the property market at a time when opportunity and flair were the hallmarks of success – and failure – and was able to outmanoeuvre the big battalions

Sir John Ritblat, former chairman of British Land, found him a shrewd operator. “I was involved in a number of transactions with him. He was a long-term investor and had the ability to take advantage of an upturn in the market.”

Mr Dellal had his business grounding in Manchester in the textile business, where property developer Vincent Tchenguiz feels he was known as “Black Jack” because he sold black material.

From textiles to property and banking and London was an enormous leap for an ambitious kid from the provinces. He wasted little time in moving into property after benefiting from Keyser’s generosity, setting up Allied Commercial and starting a 40-year association with Stanley van Gelder in 1974.

Mr Dellal kept himself out of the headlines and managed to keep the wealth analysts guessing about whether he was a billionaire or just a millionaire.

Gerald Ronson, chief executive of Heron International, benefited from his advice. He said: “He was always a man of his word and when you shook hands with him you had a deal.

“He was very charitable and very generous. He certainly helped to set up a number of people in business.”

He grew in stature as he charted his way through successive cycles in the property market and was described as an “amazing money-making machine” by one enthusiast and a “property genius” by another. Others found him an enigmatic survivor.

Bush House may have been his most spectacular deal, while the sale of Shell-Mex House in the Strand, London, showed he was a team player. A group comprising Black Jack, David and Simon Reuben and Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz shared a profit of £150m when they disposed of the building in 2007.

He helped the early property education of the Tchenguiz brothers. Vincent Tchenguiz said: “He was very helpful and we did some deals with him. He was a great guy but we found we could beat him at cards.”